I had to open it for a while, it got trapped when I put it back together. When you think about it, the insect spent the last moments of his life slowing burning (the light blub gets too hot to touch and I imagine it's worse for an incest) trapped in a strange prison with no way out, probably in panic. If this happened to a human, I would be horrified to have seen the body, but when it happens to a bug, I don't care. Even considering what the insect went through, I still find it hard to sympathize with it.

Is it truly moral to allow this? Or to actively kill an insect? Do you have empathy for insects? If not, does that make us a sort of psychopath?

At 7/13/2015 11:17:05 PM, n7 wrote:I recently found a dead bug that was trapped under light fixture. One that looks like thishttp://home.comcast.net...

I had to open it for a while, it got trapped when I put it back together. When you think about it, the insect spent the last moments of his life slowing burning (the light blub gets too hot to touch and I imagine it's worse for an incest) trapped in a strange prison with no way out, probably in panic. If this happened to a human, I would be horrified to have seen the body, but when it happens to a bug, I don't care. Even considering what the insect went through, I still find it hard to sympathize with it.

Is it truly moral to allow this? Or to actively kill an insect? Do you have empathy for insects? If not, does that make us a sort of psychopath?

At 7/13/2015 11:17:05 PM, n7 wrote:I recently found a dead bug that was trapped under light fixture. One that looks like thishttp://home.comcast.net...

I had to open it for a while, it got trapped when I put it back together. When you think about it, the insect spent the last moments of his life slowing burning (the light blub gets too hot to touch and I imagine it's worse for an incest) trapped in a strange prison with no way out, probably in panic. If this happened to a human, I would be horrified to have seen the body, but when it happens to a bug, I don't care. Even considering what the insect went through, I still find it hard to sympathize with it.

Is it truly moral to allow this? Or to actively kill an insect? Do you have empathy for insects? If not, does that make us a sort of psychopath?

I have contemplated this myself. I see certain bugs as pests and others as useful killers of said pests. I will kill the fvck out of a fly. I'll catch that bastard alive and stick him on a cactus while he's still flapping. But I will definitely not kill a spider. If my partner has a spider issue, which means there is anything but a daddy longlegs visible somewhere, I'll capture with a card and a glass and put it outside. They're my bros.Ultimately, insects are bound to die so that we may live. I don't think they're capable of feeling pain or fear, so don't worry about it.

He, he, he.

"Caitlyn Jenner is an incredibly brave and stunningly beautiful woman."

At 7/13/2015 11:17:05 PM, n7 wrote:I recently found a dead bug that was trapped under light fixture. One that looks like thishttp://home.comcast.net...

I had to open it for a while, it got trapped when I put it back together. When you think about it, the insect spent the last moments of his life slowing burning (the light blub gets too hot to touch and I imagine it's worse for an incest) trapped in a strange prison with no way out, probably in panic. If this happened to a human, I would be horrified to have seen the body, but when it happens to a bug, I don't care. Even considering what the insect went through, I still find it hard to sympathize with it.

Is it truly moral to allow this? Or to actively kill an insect? Do you have empathy for insects? If not, does that make us a sort of psychopath?

If insects do have conscious experiences, I think it is safe to say they aren't as powerful as ours based on what we observe. This means that if it is immoral to hurt an insect, it wouldn't be as immoral it would seem as there is less of a negative conscious impact. If insects have no conscious experiences at all, then it would be hard to sympathize because we do have conscious experiences. It's not like you could consistently think "I know what that's like my friend" because it wouldn't be "like" anything to be a creature with no consciousness, like an insect. So don't worry n7, I wouldn't lose sleep over the torture or death of in insect.

Nothing sid definite in the field of consciousness, but insects are probably barely if at all conscious. They seem to be limited to a finite number of behaviours which switch on in response to a finite number of stimuli. The stimulus/response link seems entirely hardwired and unconscious because insects are notorious for not learning - flies will try to fly through the glass of a window until they die of exhaustion.

Many insects behave in complex ways, but they are like industrial numerically controlled machines that are set up to do a very delicate and complex task. Such a machine may well do the task well, but it will continue to do the same actions even when they are totally inappropriate.

At 7/13/2015 11:17:05 PM, n7 wrote:I recently found a dead bug that was trapped under light fixture. One that looks like thishttp://home.comcast.net...

I had to open it for a while, it got trapped when I put it back together. When you think about it, the insect spent the last moments of his life slowing burning (the light blub gets too hot to touch and I imagine it's worse for an incest) trapped in a strange prison with no way out, probably in panic. If this happened to a human, I would be horrified to have seen the body, but when it happens to a bug, I don't care. Even considering what the insect went through, I still find it hard to sympathize with it.

Is it truly moral to allow this? Or to actively kill an insect? Do you have empathy for insects? If not, does that make us a sort of psychopath?

At 7/13/2015 11:17:05 PM, n7 wrote:I recently found a dead bug that was trapped under light fixture. One that looks like thishttp://home.comcast.net...

I had to open it for a while, it got trapped when I put it back together. When you think about it, the insect spent the last moments of his life slowing burning (the light blub gets too hot to touch and I imagine it's worse for an incest) trapped in a strange prison with no way out, probably in panic. If this happened to a human, I would be horrified to have seen the body, but when it happens to a bug, I don't care. Even considering what the insect went through, I still find it hard to sympathize with it.

Is it truly moral to allow this? Or to actively kill an insect? Do you have empathy for insects? If not, does that make us a sort of psychopath?

If it were a fruit fly, I would truly feel empathy. Many insects lack nociceptors, so can't feel pain. I'd nonetheless be against their death, but they don't really suffer. But fruit flies and relatives do have nociceptors and can feel pain. Inflicting suffering in any form is immoral.

"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe." - Frederick Douglass

At 7/13/2015 11:17:05 PM, n7 wrote:I recently found a dead bug that was trapped under light fixture. One that looks like thishttp://home.comcast.net...

I had to open it for a while, it got trapped when I put it back together. When you think about it, the insect spent the last moments of his life slowing burning (the light blub gets too hot to touch and I imagine it's worse for an incest) trapped in a strange prison with no way out, probably in panic. If this happened to a human, I would be horrified to have seen the body, but when it happens to a bug, I don't care. Even considering what the insect went through, I still find it hard to sympathize with it.

Is it truly moral to allow this? Or to actively kill an insect? Do you have empathy for insects? If not, does that make us a sort of psychopath?

If it were a fruit fly, I would truly feel empathy. Many insects lack nociceptors, so can't feel pain. I'd nonetheless be against their death, but they don't really suffer. But fruit flies and relatives do have nociceptors and can feel pain. Inflicting suffering in any form is immoral.

At 7/13/2015 11:17:05 PM, n7 wrote:I recently found a dead bug that was trapped under light fixture. One that looks like thishttp://home.comcast.net...

I had to open it for a while, it got trapped when I put it back together. When you think about it, the insect spent the last moments of his life slowing burning (the light blub gets too hot to touch and I imagine it's worse for an incest) trapped in a strange prison with no way out, probably in panic. If this happened to a human, I would be horrified to have seen the body, but when it happens to a bug, I don't care. Even considering what the insect went through, I still find it hard to sympathize with it.

Is it truly moral to allow this? Or to actively kill an insect? Do you have empathy for insects? If not, does that make us a sort of psychopath?

If it were a fruit fly, I would truly feel empathy. Many insects lack nociceptors, so can't feel pain. I'd nonetheless be against their death, but they don't really suffer. But fruit flies and relatives do have nociceptors and can feel pain. Inflicting suffering in any form is immoral.

Frankly, I would show empathy for anything BUT flies.

Not flies -- fruit flies, entirely different species from the housefly.

"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe." - Frederick Douglass

From what I know I don't think bugs' minds are complex enough to generate pain like we know it. Their movements are more of an unconscious reaction much like when a doctor pounds on your knee and your leg kicks out.

Either way I understand what you mean since I always think about the emotions of any insect I kill afterwards. But I've always been a pretty big animal/nature-lover and prefer to capture the bugs and let them outside.

What about ants. It's hell when they've infiltrated your house and spread... Do they feel pain? Fear? Whenever there's an infestation, I use liquid poison products; I place a bit on a tab of paper and place the toxin in a corner where there are ants. I come back 45 minutes later and there are so many ants squirming together and riding on top of each other in space as little as 2cm" that a black hole forms. lol jk bad joke is bad.

Most answers have to do with them not having nociceptors or the same level of consciousnesses as us. However, what if a human was born with a certain condition that prevented them from feeling pain (which happens https://en.wikipedia.org...) and doesn't have the same level of consciousness as others? Would it then be okay to kill this person?

I don't think having nociceptors necessarily means not feeling pain. In other creatures pain may be realized in nociceptors, but that doesn't entail that insects don't have pain realized at all. For example, if we met silicone based aliens they wouldn't have nociceptors (as they are carbon based), but we would still think that if they acted like us, they'd feel pain.

I don't think that an insect with nociptors necessarily feels pain. More likely such nerves send information regarding body damage to the insects 'brain' causing a unconscious switch in behaviour as I described in my earlier post.

I put 'brain' in scares because I imagine an insect brain as being where the behaviour-switching is controlled. I think an insects brain is not complex enough to implement any high-level mental functions such as reason and consciosness - it just doesn't have enough neurones. I admit that is a pure and uninformed guess (this is the internet after all), but there must be a reason why our own brains are so big. If high level mental functions could be implemented in a few hundered neurons our huge brains are just a waste of energy to grow and carry around. Surely all those brain cells are for more than stopping the top of our heads from caving in?

Although watching daytime tv makes me think I could be wrong about that.

At 7/13/2015 11:17:05 PM, n7 wrote:I recently found a dead bug that was trapped under light fixture. One that looks like thishttp://home.comcast.net...

I had to open it for a while, it got trapped when I put it back together. When you think about it, the insect spent the last moments of his life slowing burning (the light blub gets too hot to touch and I imagine it's worse for an incest) trapped in a strange prison with no way out, probably in panic. If this happened to a human, I would be horrified to have seen the body, but when it happens to a bug, I don't care. Even considering what the insect went through, I still find it hard to sympathize with it.

Is it truly moral to allow this? Or to actively kill an insect? Do you have empathy for insects? If not, does that make us a sort of psychopath?

At 7/13/2015 11:17:05 PM, n7 wrote:I recently found a dead bug that was trapped under light fixture. One that looks like thishttp://home.comcast.net...

I had to open it for a while, it got trapped when I put it back together. When you think about it, the insect spent the last moments of his life slowing burning (the light blub gets too hot to touch and I imagine it's worse for an incest) trapped in a strange prison with no way out, probably in panic. If this happened to a human, I would be horrified to have seen the body, but when it happens to a bug, I don't care. Even considering what the insect went through, I still find it hard to sympathize with it.

Is it truly moral to allow this? Or to actively kill an insect? Do you have empathy for insects? If not, does that make us a sort of psychopath?

If insects do have conscious experiences, I think it is safe to say they aren't as powerful as ours based on what we observe. This means that if it is immoral to hurt an insect, it wouldn't be as immoral it would seem as there is less of a negative conscious impact. If insects have no conscious experiences at all, then it would be hard to sympathize because we do have conscious experiences. It's not like you could consistently think "I know what that's like my friend" because it wouldn't be "like" anything to be a creature with no consciousness, like an insect. So don't worry n7, I wouldn't lose sleep over the torture or death of in insect.

Perhaps we're conflating intelligence with subjective experience. We have no way of determining that they don't feel a form of distress from injury... and since they express the same aversive response to those sources of distress as we do, we can err on a more parsimonious theory -- that the aversive action is incentivized by a suffering of some form - similar to humans.

But of course our willingness to dismiss the moral value of an insects life stems not from any clear and rational distinction their experience and our own, but a judgement from outward dissimilarity. ...thus my skepticism of the objective consistency of our collective judgement.

"A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains; but a true politician binds them even more strongly with the chain of their own ideas" - Michel Foucault

I am completely hypocritcal on this. I am - in theory - a non-specieisist who believes in the sanctity of all life, and I hold that the suffering of animals is a great evil. In practice I eat meat every day and enjoy doing so.

It's a lot easier to eat a lamb chop bought in a supermarket than to kill a sheep with your bare hands. Most people don't connect pre-packaged meat to real animals. When I lived in Kenya whenever I was invited to some ones home for a meal I'd usually see the main course tied up and grazing in the garden when I arrived - at least I knew it was fresh!

I abhor gratuitous cruelty to animals. The poor goats I ate in Kenya were dispatched with remarkable swiftness - I am not so sure it always so in industrialised slaughterhouses now I am back in the UK. That is not good on my part. In the civilised world we are insulated from the reality of animal slaughter. Many people who are indifferent to the suffering of animals has never actually seen an animal suffering so they don't know that animals can and do suffer.

The fact is that most people are against animal suffering and handle it by not thinking about it. But we do the sane with people too. 28 people were killed by a car bomb yesterday, but it was in Baghdad so we don't care, even if it means there are lot more than 28 people without a husband or wide, sister or brother. We aren't heartless when we ignore dead Iraqis or eat steak - there is just too much bad stuff out there to worry about it.

At 7/13/2015 11:17:05 PM, n7 wrote:Is it truly moral to allow this? Or to actively kill an insect? Do you have empathy for insects? If not, does that make us a sort of psychopath?

Empathy is irrelevant in the question of morality here. And well, my obvious position is that it is amoral, and hence no better or worse than killing a human. We have people in this thread appealing to different grades of consciousness, but they all seem to miss the point. Consciousness is irrelevant too. If consciousness is just first-person subjective experience, then I see no argument against insects being conscious either. They are capable of vision, smell, and comprehending other stimuli. Thus, it has an experience of some sort - one would quickly fall into solipsism if they argue that such is not sufficient for consciousness (because if it is not, then by what standard do we judge humans to be conscious?).

At 7/13/2015 11:17:05 PM, n7 wrote:I recently found a dead bug that was trapped under light fixture. One that looks like thishttp://home.comcast.net...

I had to open it for a while, it got trapped when I put it back together. When you think about it, the insect spent the last moments of his life slowing burning (the light blub gets too hot to touch and I imagine it's worse for an incest) trapped in a strange prison with no way out, probably in panic. If this happened to a human, I would be horrified to have seen the body, but when it happens to a bug, I don't care. Even considering what the insect went through, I still find it hard to sympathize with it.

Is it truly moral to allow this? Or to actively kill an insect? Do you have empathy for insects? If not, does that make us a sort of psychopath?

I'm interested, what are your views on killing animals in general?

I don't think they should be killed unnecessarily. That is to say solely for fur coats, ivory, and hunting (when the animal isn't a dangerous pest and when food isn't a problem).

As for eating meat in general, I find it hard to justify. The nutrition argument is probably the best, but it's controversial that meat is the best or only way to get the necessary nutrition.

Not sure about kill shelters, the arguments for them seem like they are better than no-kill shelters.http://www.peta.org...

At 7/13/2015 11:17:05 PM, n7 wrote:Is it truly moral to allow this? Or to actively kill an insect? Do you have empathy for insects? If not, does that make us a sort of psychopath?

Empathy is irrelevant in the question of morality here. And well, my obvious position is that it is amoral, and hence no better or worse than killing a human.

Agreed fully. But if killing humans = bad, killing insects = bad.

We have people in this thread appealing to different grades of consciousness, but they all seem to miss the point. Consciousness is irrelevant too. If consciousness is just first-person subjective experience, then I see no argument against insects being conscious either. They are capable of vision, smell, and comprehending other stimuli.

Depends on the insect in question, though. Many lack, for instance, nociceptors.

Thus, it has an experience of some sort - one would quickly fall into solipsism if they argue that such is not sufficient for consciousness (because if it is not, then by what standard do we judge humans to be conscious?).

+1 this post.

"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe." - Frederick Douglass

At 7/13/2015 11:17:05 PM, n7 wrote:I recently found a dead bug that was trapped under light fixture. One that looks like thishttp://home.comcast.net...

I had to open it for a while, it got trapped when I put it back together. When you think about it, the insect spent the last moments of his life slowing burning (the light blub gets too hot to touch and I imagine it's worse for an incest) trapped in a strange prison with no way out, probably in panic. If this happened to a human, I would be horrified to have seen the body, but when it happens to a bug, I don't care. Even considering what the insect went through, I still find it hard to sympathize with it.

Is it truly moral to allow this? Or to actively kill an insect? Do you have empathy for insects? If not, does that make us a sort of psychopath?

I'm interested, what are your views on killing animals in general?

I don't think they should be killed unnecessarily. That is to say solely for fur coats, ivory, and hunting (when the animal isn't a dangerous pest and when food isn't a problem).

As for eating meat in general, I find it hard to justify. The nutrition argument is probably the best, but it's controversial that meat is the best or only way to get the necessary nutrition.

The nutrition argument is really weak IMO, but it's still the best argument for eating meat (besides moral nihilism, maximization of pleasure, etc -- but under these arguments you could justify sadistic tendencies). May Singer's utilitarianism prevail.

Not sure about kill shelters, the arguments for them seem like they are better than no-kill shelters.http://www.peta.org...

I have to read into it.

"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe." - Frederick Douglass

At 7/13/2015 11:17:05 PM, n7 wrote:I recently found a dead bug that was trapped under light fixture. One that looks like thishttp://home.comcast.net...

I had to open it for a while, it got trapped when I put it back together. When you think about it, the insect spent the last moments of his life slowing burning (the light blub gets too hot to touch and I imagine it's worse for an incest) trapped in a strange prison with no way out, probably in panic. If this happened to a human, I would be horrified to have seen the body, but when it happens to a bug, I don't care. Even considering what the insect went through, I still find it hard to sympathize with it.

Is it truly moral to allow this? Or to actively kill an insect? Do you have empathy for insects? If not, does that make us a sort of psychopath?

I don't think it is moral to hurt any creature, if only because we don't really know to what extent an insect can feel "agony" in a way we can relate to and therefore feel sorry for them. So if I kill an insect by mistake, well I killed it, that's it, I won't feel bad but I would say I would prefer not to do it, and I don't kill insects actively, unless they attack me ie mosquitos, wasps... To put you an example, I have a summer house on a mountain in which spiders seem to be pretty frequent. I think I have never killed a single one of them, I simply get the spider in my hand and put it outside the house. Of course this is not the right thing to do in places with venomous spiders, so I'm not judging anyone that kills spiders, don't get me wrong :)

Of course anyone that thinks like me needs to accept we are always a bit of hypocrites, I mean, I won't kill a spider but I will gladly eat a cow and therefore support the horrible living conditions they suffer at farms, etc.

So, to summarize, I would not give a lot of thought to what happened to your insect lol

At 7/13/2015 11:17:05 PM, n7 wrote:I recently found a dead bug that was trapped under light fixture. One that looks like thishttp://home.comcast.net...

I had to open it for a while, it got trapped when I put it back together. When you think about it, the insect spent the last moments of his life slowing burning (the light blub gets too hot to touch and I imagine it's worse for an incest) trapped in a strange prison with no way out, probably in panic. If this happened to a human, I would be horrified to have seen the body, but when it happens to a bug, I don't care. Even considering what the insect went through, I still find it hard to sympathize with it.

Is it truly moral to allow this? Or to actively kill an insect? Do you have empathy for insects? If not, does that make us a sort of psychopath?

If insects do have conscious experiences, I think it is safe to say they aren't as powerful as ours based on what we observe. This means that if it is immoral to hurt an insect, it wouldn't be as immoral it would seem as there is less of a negative conscious impact. If insects have no conscious experiences at all, then it would be hard to sympathize because we do have conscious experiences. It's not like you could consistently think "I know what that's like my friend" because it wouldn't be "like" anything to be a creature with no consciousness, like an insect. So don't worry n7, I wouldn't lose sleep over the torture or death of in insect.

Why do you say their conscious experiences are less than our's? I'm just curious from where you derive that conclusion.

At 7/13/2015 11:17:05 PM, n7 wrote:I recently found a dead bug that was trapped under light fixture. One that looks like thishttp://home.comcast.net...

I had to open it for a while, it got trapped when I put it back together. When you think about it, the insect spent the last moments of his life slowing burning (the light blub gets too hot to touch and I imagine it's worse for an incest) trapped in a strange prison with no way out, probably in panic. If this happened to a human, I would be horrified to have seen the body, but when it happens to a bug, I don't care. Even considering what the insect went through, I still find it hard to sympathize with it.

Is it truly moral to allow this? Or to actively kill an insect? Do you have empathy for insects? If not, does that make us a sort of psychopath?

And when it happens to humans, God doesn't care either. Consider the black death, or the explosion of Mount Vesuvius. God has a hand in these atrocities, but he justifies it on the premise of being "superior". Is there an answer that's truly satisfying. My own view is that there isn't.

At 7/13/2015 11:17:05 PM, n7 wrote:I recently found a dead bug that was trapped under light fixture. One that looks like thishttp://home.comcast.net...

I had to open it for a while, it got trapped when I put it back together. When you think about it, the insect spent the last moments of his life slowing burning (the light blub gets too hot to touch and I imagine it's worse for an incest) trapped in a strange prison with no way out, probably in panic. If this happened to a human, I would be horrified to have seen the body, but when it happens to a bug, I don't care. Even considering what the insect went through, I still find it hard to sympathize with it.

Is it truly moral to allow this? Or to actively kill an insect? Do you have empathy for insects? If not, does that make us a sort of psychopath?

If insects do have conscious experiences, I think it is safe to say they aren't as powerful as ours based on what we observe. This means that if it is immoral to hurt an insect, it wouldn't be as immoral it would seem as there is less of a negative conscious impact. If insects have no conscious experiences at all, then it would be hard to sympathize because we do have conscious experiences. It's not like you could consistently think "I know what that's like my friend" because it wouldn't be "like" anything to be a creature with no consciousness, like an insect. So don't worry n7, I wouldn't lose sleep over the torture or death of in insect.

Why do you say their conscious experiences are less than our's? I'm just curious from where you derive that conclusion.

Conscious states correlate with brain states. We have more complex brains.

At 7/13/2015 11:17:05 PM, n7 wrote:I recently found a dead bug that was trapped under light fixture. One that looks like thishttp://home.comcast.net...

I had to open it for a while, it got trapped when I put it back together. When you think about it, the insect spent the last moments of his life slowing burning (the light blub gets too hot to touch and I imagine it's worse for an incest) trapped in a strange prison with no way out, probably in panic. If this happened to a human, I would be horrified to have seen the body, but when it happens to a bug, I don't care. Even considering what the insect went through, I still find it hard to sympathize with it.

Is it truly moral to allow this? Or to actively kill an insect? Do you have empathy for insects? If not, does that make us a sort of psychopath?

If insects do have conscious experiences, I think it is safe to say they aren't as powerful as ours based on what we observe. This means that if it is immoral to hurt an insect, it wouldn't be as immoral it would seem as there is less of a negative conscious impact. If insects have no conscious experiences at all, then it would be hard to sympathize because we do have conscious experiences. It's not like you could consistently think "I know what that's like my friend" because it wouldn't be "like" anything to be a creature with no consciousness, like an insect. So don't worry n7, I wouldn't lose sleep over the torture or death of in insect.

Why do you say their conscious experiences are less than our's? I'm just curious from where you derive that conclusion.

Conscious states correlate with brain states. We have more complex brains.

I thought you believed that physical reality was contingent on mind, and not the other way around. So why would the complexity of the brain determine the complexity of consciousness if consciousness is not a product of brain activity?

At 7/13/2015 11:17:05 PM, n7 wrote:I recently found a dead bug that was trapped under light fixture. One that looks like thishttp://home.comcast.net...

I had to open it for a while, it got trapped when I put it back together. When you think about it, the insect spent the last moments of his life slowing burning (the light blub gets too hot to touch and I imagine it's worse for an incest) trapped in a strange prison with no way out, probably in panic. If this happened to a human, I would be horrified to have seen the body, but when it happens to a bug, I don't care. Even considering what the insect went through, I still find it hard to sympathize with it.

Is it truly moral to allow this? Or to actively kill an insect? Do you have empathy for insects? If not, does that make us a sort of psychopath?

If insects do have conscious experiences, I think it is safe to say they aren't as powerful as ours based on what we observe. This means that if it is immoral to hurt an insect, it wouldn't be as immoral it would seem as there is less of a negative conscious impact. If insects have no conscious experiences at all, then it would be hard to sympathize because we do have conscious experiences. It's not like you could consistently think "I know what that's like my friend" because it wouldn't be "like" anything to be a creature with no consciousness, like an insect. So don't worry n7, I wouldn't lose sleep over the torture or death of in insect.

Why do you say their conscious experiences are less than our's? I'm just curious from where you derive that conclusion.

Conscious states correlate with brain states. We have more complex brains.

I thought you believed that physical reality was contingent on mind, and not the other way around. So why would the complexity of the brain determine the complexity of consciousness if consciousness is not a product of brain activity?

I think his response would be that the more complex the mind is, the more complex the projected illusion of the brain is.

At 7/13/2015 11:17:05 PM, n7 wrote:I recently found a dead bug that was trapped under light fixture. One that looks like thishttp://home.comcast.net...

I had to open it for a while, it got trapped when I put it back together. When you think about it, the insect spent the last moments of his life slowing burning (the light blub gets too hot to touch and I imagine it's worse for an incest) trapped in a strange prison with no way out, probably in panic. If this happened to a human, I would be horrified to have seen the body, but when it happens to a bug, I don't care. Even considering what the insect went through, I still find it hard to sympathize with it.

Is it truly moral to allow this? Or to actively kill an insect? Do you have empathy for insects? If not, does that make us a sort of psychopath?

If insects do have conscious experiences, I think it is safe to say they aren't as powerful as ours based on what we observe. This means that if it is immoral to hurt an insect, it wouldn't be as immoral it would seem as there is less of a negative conscious impact. If insects have no conscious experiences at all, then it would be hard to sympathize because we do have conscious experiences. It's not like you could consistently think "I know what that's like my friend" because it wouldn't be "like" anything to be a creature with no consciousness, like an insect. So don't worry n7, I wouldn't lose sleep over the torture or death of in insect.

Why do you say their conscious experiences are less than our's? I'm just curious from where you derive that conclusion.

Conscious states correlate with brain states. We have more complex brains.

I thought you believed that physical reality was contingent on mind, and not the other way around. So why would the complexity of the brain determine the complexity of consciousness if consciousness is not a product of brain activity?

I think his response would be that the more complex the mind is, the more complex the projected illusion of the brain is.

Hence we can estimate complexity of conciousness from complexity of brain. Something I don't understand about that model is why there is a discretization in the complexity of brains then, and a discretization in the types of forms available for minds to project themselves into. What imposes the finite availability of kinds of forms and kinds of brains which are available for a mind to project itself into?

I sometimes ponder over it myself. For example, whenever I see a spider in my shower right before I'm about to take one. Sometimes I think about whether or not I want to turn on the water and watch it drown before falling into the drain; I kind of feel bad doing it later. I can reflect on what if I was that spider crawling into a place I know nothing about, as this giant man opens a glass screen door, and reaches out for a lever up high until all of a sudden, I'm caught in a torrential waterfall of death and there's no way out. It's interesting to think about.

Ordinary men hate solitude. But the Master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the whole universe (Lao Tzu).

At 7/13/2015 11:17:05 PM, n7 wrote:I recently found a dead bug that was trapped under light fixture. One that looks like thishttp://home.comcast.net...

I had to open it for a while, it got trapped when I put it back together. When you think about it, the insect spent the last moments of his life slowing burning (the light blub gets too hot to touch and I imagine it's worse for an incest) trapped in a strange prison with no way out, probably in panic. If this happened to a human, I would be horrified to have seen the body, but when it happens to a bug, I don't care. Even considering what the insect went through, I still find it hard to sympathize with it.

Is it truly moral to allow this? Or to actively kill an insect? Do you have empathy for insects? If not, does that make us a sort of psychopath?

I don't believe in needlessly killing living things, but I also don't believe that insects have significant moral worth.